Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.

The crisis of children having children has been eclipsed by the greater crisis of children killing children.

[Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].

Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.

I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.

We're a violent nation, and we need to confront it. This gun plague has to stop.

I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents. We've got to send messages to our kids about what is important.